Ashley Hefner, Photographer and Staff Writer
Like many people, I have brushed off recent cases of public antisemitism as if they were not a concern; Kanye’s Super Bowl ad selling swastika shirts, Elon Musk’s possible Nazi salute at the inauguration, etc. These incidents should have immediately invoked a sense of urgency within me; yet, the sentiments I should have felt were not awakened until I saw the Broadway musical Cabaret.
Cabaret takes place in 1930s Berlin during the rise of Nazism and fascism. The play follows Sally Bowles (Auli’i Cravalho), a cabaret performer at the Kit Kat Club, and Cliff Bradshaw (Calvin Leon Smith), a writer from the United States.
Before seeing Cabaret, my only knowledge of the show was a few of the iconic songs, like “Money” and “Don’t Tell Mama.” I thought seeing the show would be a fun, light-hearted activity to do with my sister, who was visiting from Toronto. That was not the case.
The show sends an explicit message to viewers about the problems that arise from embodying apathetic attitudes toward threatening circumstances. I left in tears, understanding that people are ignoring and making excuses for clear signs of antisemitism today, just as German society did in the 1930s.
The lyrics of the title number portray the indifference many people exhibited during Hitler’s rise to power in Germany. The line, “No use permitting some prophet of doom to wipe every smile away,” expresses the song’s very essence: “Life is a cabaret.” There is no point in paying attention to anything invoking despair, because it’s more pleasant to live a blissfully ignorant life.
In the final scene of Act One, the characters are at an engagement party for Cliff’s German landlady and her Jewish fiance. Ernst Ludwig, an acquaintance of Sally and Cliff, attends the party and removes his jacket to join the celebratory dancing, only to reveal a swastika on his sleeve. Shockingly, Cliff is the only character who criticizes Ludwig’s political affiliation.
The scene with the swastika reminded me of current events displaying antisemitic attitudes. One being Kanye West’s Super Bowl ad, which directed customers to a website selling only one item: a shirt with a swastika on it. Too few people publicly criticized West’s blatant display of hatred. Another was the reaction – or lack thereof – to Elon Musk’s possible Nazi salute at the inauguration. Despite the fact that Musk may not have intended his gesture antisemitically, the mere fact that someone could interpret it as such is problematic. His response (“Frankly they need better tricks. The ‘everyone is Hitler’ attack is sooo tired.”) did not show sensitivity towards the danger behind his antisemitic gesture. These responses are worth more than just our attention; it’s essential society act on things that could be associated with such dangerous beliefs to ensure we do not mimic the past.
Although the play ends without telling the events of the Holocaust, we are all too familiar with what followed in the ladder years of the 1930s and 1940s. As Cabaret points out, people’s indifference regarding antisemitism during this time period resulted in the deaths of six million Jews.
If present day society cannot learn from the past and stand up to hostility in cases like West and Musk’s, we run the risk of repeating that dark history we all know came next.
In the play, the song, “If You Could Could See Her,” a commentary on how people viewed Jews as less than human, should have made every audience member extremely uncomfortable, internalizing the reality of Germany in the ‘30s. I felt sick to my stomach watching this scene, but a majority of the audience laughed the entire time, displaying a terrifying lack of sensitivity to the issue. If people cannot understand a clear message illustrated in a song, how can we trust the world to call out antisemitism at all?
Everyone should learn from the main lesson displayed in Cabaret and speak out against anything that signals danger to Jewish people. Whether it is an offensive action like Musk’s, or even more so when someone does something to physically harm our people, Jews need to point fingers at the wrongdoing of society before apathy leads to unimaginable horrors. Rather than mirroring the apathy of society during Hitler’s rise to power, we should continue to talk about the dangers in the world and ensure we give them the recognition required to destroy them.
In the finale of Cabaret, Cliff says, “There was a cabaret. And there was a master of ceremonies. And there was a city called Berlin in a country called Germany. It was the end of the world. And I was dancing with Sally Bowles, and we were both fast asleep.” Do not follow in their footsteps.
Don’t turn in the opposite direction when injustice stands before you. Validate the wrongs of the world and do something about it.
Photo Caption: The Kit Kat Club
Photo Credit: Ashley Hefner / the YU Observer